Ice hockey, Italy has a new technical commissioner
Italy to Jalonen
The Italian Ice Sports Federation has announced that it has entrusted Finland’s Jukka Jalonen with the technical leadership of the Italian national ice hockey team. The 61-year-old è a highly experienced coach and in his 30-year career canò boast an Olympic gold and bronze medal, as well as three world gold, silver and bronze medals. From 2007 to the present, with a break between 2013 and 2018, è in fact, he was the head coach of the Finnish national team.
Over the next few weeks, in consultation with Jalonen, the support staff will also be defined, as well as a detailed program that will take the Azzurri to the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Jukka Jalonen took his first coaching steps in the early ’90s, not yet 30 years old, when first as an assistant and then as head coach he sat on the benches of Ilves and Lukko, in the Finnish Liiga. Meanwhile, he also gathers his first experiences with the Finnish U17 and U18 national youth teams. Between 1998 and 2001 he obtained his first head coaching positions abroad, in England, in Newcastle, and also in Italy, where he coached Alleghe in the 1998/99 season. From 2001 to 2007 he returned to Liiga and took over the reins of’HKP, a team from the Finnish city of Hämeenlinna: here, after three consecutive bronze medals, in 2006 he won the championship and the Kalevi Numminen Trophy, reserved for the best coach of the season.
From there on he devoted himself to the Finnish national team, in his first year as assistant coach, then as head coach: in 12 years he made history, winning everything and also bringing Finland its first Olympic gold medal, in Beijing 2022. During this time he twice won the Finnish best coach award (in 2011, when he hit his first world gold medal, and in 2016, when he also won the rainbow event at the helm of the U20 national team), while in 2012 he was inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame. At the club level, he coached for four seasons in the KHL between 2012 and 2018, two years for SKA St. Petersburg and two more for Jokerit.
